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Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Every morning I find I have produced (and maybe everyone produces?) about half a cup of bright yellow stuff (bile? resentment? hopes? dreams?) in my stomach over night. On the days when I know that Greg and I are both going to be in the office, and I am going to see him, I seem to find it necessary to puke this stuff into the sink right after I brush my teeth. It's watery; it goes right down the drain. I strain and hurl over it until all that yellow is gone. It's vomiting, okay? On days when I'm out of the office or I know Greg is, I don't.

Do they make a Hallmark card for this? Oh, my love, when I am about to be near you, I must empty my stomach of nighttime residue. Always be mine.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Last time Brad Womack was the Bachelor, he behaved throughout the whole season like a large piece of lumber. He displayed the emotional range of an paralyzed musk ox. Seriously. He left two girls standing on a hillside, looking like leaky idiots, as he staggered off into the sunset with the same flatironed expression that he had on the night he met them. I think he even might have said, "It was so nice to meet you" as he shut the door on their limos.

Which is the same thing he said to the thirty new women he met on the Bachelor this week. Because he is back, having spent three years in commitmentphobe therapy. In therapy he learned to say, "I'm a changed man" and "I am here for the right reasons" and "I have been in therapy for three years." Fortunately he still knows how to awkwardly greet women by saying "Can I get a hug" and "It's so nice to meet you." When I say he behaved exactly the same way he acted last time, I am not exaggerating. I am a lovesick female. I notice.

Did one single one of these girls stand up and say, "Sorry, you're an inanimate object. And plus you're stupid. I'm leaving!"? No. They are all willing to give him another chance. They are all so desperate, so driven by loneliness or fame-greed or enslaved to inertia that they stand there, hoping, crying, waiting for a rose. Some of them got them. They were excited. Some of them didn't. They were sad.

Could they possibly be any more stupid? Single women are fucking ridiculous. I'm ashamed of myself by association.

Monday, January 3, 2011

From my infinite depth of experience, I now present five things you can do to change absolutely nothing and stay single for another glorious lonely day. None of these behaviors will get you a boyfriend, guaranteed:

1. Walk briskly past his department, as if you have somewhere important to be. Keep in mind what you've read: looking busy makes you attractive. Lift your head with a preoccupied air, and march on by, swinging your arms with purpose. Imagine he glances up and sees you headed off to a meeting or on your way to pick up a hot document. He notices your carefree, jaunty manner. He thinks, "I should talk to that girl. She seems like an interesting specimen. So full of good ideas." Do not look in his direction. If you do this at least four times throughout the day, determined to NOT check first to see whether he is looking or even at his desk, you will be sure to end the day man-free.

2. Check your email 57 times. Especially around lunch time. He might send you an email, after all. "Hey, I remember you from five out of every seven days of the last few hundred weeks. Do you want to get a sandwich?" You should check.

3. Spend an enormous amount of time picking out your outfit. The time you spend in front of the mirror in the morning is inversely proportional to the number of boyfriends you have by evening.

4. When having coffee in the break room, read an improving novel. Sit so that the cover of the novel is facing the door. Try a "The Girl Who..." book. Or the new Franzen. Maybe by chance he has just finished reading this exact novel. Say nothing. When he walks in, don't look up. Lay a shred of turkey on a tiny cracker and put it between your lip glossed lips, not moving your eyes from the page. For bonus points: if you choose a novel you know for sure that he has recently finished reading himself, you will increase your chances of getting laid by zero.

5. Look down most of the time. In fact, carefully time your packing up and your end of the day conversations so that you're standing in the elevator with the man of your dreams. Spend the whole trip focusing on his zipper pull. Or, if that makes you feel too hopeful, focus on his shoes.

Still, there remains the thrill of going to work tomorrow. What would I do without my unrequited love to look forward to?

The dimensions of the apartment seem different, as if something had shifted. Like the hallway is half an inch bigger, and the bathroom is on slant. I'm more awake this morning than I have been on a Monday in recent memory. Sun seems brighter, more intense. Wearing a dime sized squirt of glitter hair gel. Little bit of digestive distress, to be honest with you. It's like, I've been working with this guy for three years, but, today is the first day that I'll be seriously working on my agenda. Feel like I have to pay attention to where I put my feet when I walk. On which floor do I get off the elevator?

In other news, I stuffed the TV Santa back into the corner of the closet, so Christmas is officially over, and the decorations are packed. Let's get on with 2011

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Walking the pug tonight, I stomped past a church with a full sidewalk. Lots of young things in hair gel swirlies, H&M jackets, buckle boots. Spose it's some singles night or mixer or whatever. Everyone staring at their phones. All those different perfumes swirling together. Each one of them smelling desperate. I'm tired of being in that line, they're like homeless people on soup kitchen Saturday, standing on the same sidewalk squares. Tired of being single, of worrying about whether or not to roll up my cuffs. Or whether or not I actually have a text. Or if I just need one to come in immediately so I don't have to start up a conversation. It's warm, wow. Yeah, and it was so cold. Everything that's not Greg seems like that hormonal pileup outside that church. It's just so hopeless. I can't do that anymore.

Last night at midnight, all over the country and the world, when the ball dropped and the confetti went off, thousands of hot single guys raised their beer bottles, or mugs, or maybe even martini glasses, but probably just beer bottles, and toasted the new year. They tossed their hair, they flexed their biceps, they flashed their white teeth. And somewhere near each one of them, just off to the side and slightly behind, was a schlumpy, dumpy girl with her glass raised too.

She was looking at him expectantly, but not too expectantly, like ready but not too ready, kinda like there but not there. She was hoping he remembered that it's tradition to wait until midnight strikes and then grab the nearest girl and kiss her like she's never been kissed before. She hoped in her dumpy little fluffy heart that if there were fireworks going off outside when their lips met, that there just might be fireworks in his heart when their lips parted. She'd dreamed of it, planned for it, edged her way inconspicuously over toward him for the last twenty minutes, even danced to "California Girls" just to blend in. Or maybe that was just me. And I really just moved my knees around, which doesn't even count.

Her heart rate was elevated, her palms were damp, she had just the right amount of lip gloss -- not too greasy, not too dry. But then at midnight, in all the cheering and the people trying to see the TV, the idiot turned away and high fived his friends, or maybe he took another suck off his beer or whatever cocktail, or started telling some loud joke, or went to get another piece of pizza. In Greg's case, he didn't really do anything. He just stood there looking broodingly out the window. Not kissing me. Not kissing anyone.

Embarrassing. And I thought to myself: This is the last time.

This is the last New Year's Eve I'm standing shyly beside the elbow of some guy who doesn't even know anything about kissing traditions, waiting to get kissed. This is the year I get a boyfriend, so that when that confetti gets thrown, I'm already in the arms of someone who knows he's supposed to kiss me.

Let the record show that on this day it was decided. I have one resolution, and one only. By this time next year, Greg better be mine.